Perseverance Quotes

Here is a re-purposed old page of mine…now new & improved…on quotes about perseverance.  

If you feel like giving up on something right now, read this page and tell me what you think/feel at the end:

1. If a man has any brains at all, let him hold on to his calling, and, in the grand sweep of things, his turn will come at last. -W. McCune

2. The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders, these are the masters of victory. -Burke

3. No road is too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; and no honors are too distant for the man who prepares himself for them with patience. -Bruyere

4. Perseverance and audacity generally win. -Madame Deluzy

5. The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t. -H.W. Beecher

6. There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, and all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures. -J.G. Holland

7. It is with many enterprises as with striking fire; we do not meet with success except by reiterated efforts, and often at the instant when we despaired of success. -Madame de Maintenon

8. Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world’s wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and bids the choicest fruits and flowers spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briers. -S.G. Goodrich

9. There are two ways of attaining an important end–force and perseverance. Force falls to the lot only of the privileged few, but austere and sustained perseverance can be practiced by the most insignificant. Its silent power grows irresistible with time. -Madame Swetchine

10. I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. -T.F. Buxton

11. Hasten slowly, and without losing heart put your work twenty times upon the anvil. -Boileau

12. Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success. -Rochefoucauld

13. Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair. -Burke

14. Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before. -Polybius

15. Hard pounding, gentlemen; but we will see who can pound the longest. -Wellington at Waterloo

16. Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure. -Edward Eggleston

17. The divine insanity of noble minds,
that never falters nor abates,
but labors, endures, and waits,
till all that it foresees it finds,
or what it cannot find, creates.
-Longfellow

18. We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are. -Tobias Wolff

19. There was no such thing as defeat if you didn’t accept it. -Fay Weldon

20. As long as we are persistent in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we will fully bloom. It happens in its own time. -Denis Waitley

21. If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually, one discovers that it is not boring, but very interesting. -Unknown

22. Don’t be discouraged. It’s often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock. -Unknown

23. No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years. -Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

24. Saints are sinners who kept on going. -Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1895)

25. I am not the smartest or most talented person in the world. But I succeeded because I keep going, and going, and going. -Sylvester Stallone

26. It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up. -Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

27. I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature. -John D. Rockefeller

28. When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. -Jacob Riis

29. The world doesn’t come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people. -Mary Rinehart

30. Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when taken little by little. -Plutarch

31. Your biggest break can come from never quitting. Being at the right place at the right time can only happen when you keep moving toward the next opportunity. -Arthur Pine

32. Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown. -H. Ross Perot

33. Nothing of great value in life comes easily. The things of highest value sometimes come hard. The gold that has the greatest value lies deepest in the earth, as do the diamonds. -Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

34. Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting. -Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

35. The basis of accomplishment is in never quitting. -Mengzi Meng-tse (370-300BC)

36. You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing. -Rene McPherson

37. There is genius in persistence. It conquers all opposers. It gives confidence. It annihilates obstacles. Everybody believes in a determined man. People know that when he undertakes a thing, the battle is half won, for his rule is to accomplish whatever he sets out to do. -Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924)

38. Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent. -Sophia Loren

39. Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake somebody. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1819-1892)

40. An inventor fails 999 times and, and if he succeeds once, he’s victorious. He treats his failures as practice shots. -Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958)

41. Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. -William James (1842-1910)

42. Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness. -Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895)

43. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success? -Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915)

44. What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement. -Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

45. The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail. -Napoleon Hill

46. I try. I am trying. I was trying. I will try. I shall in the meantime try. I sometimes have tried. I shall still by that time be trying. -Diane Glancy

47. We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives. -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

48. Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. -Newt Gingrich

There you have it.  I’m sure many of these really “spoke to you”…so, which ones?  Mention the numbers in the comments section below, and tell me/us why you chose some of them.  If you have any of your own quotes to share, please do so.

-Shawn